The Haunting of Harriet Read online

  She recalled making her father a cup of tea, his favourite Earl Grey, and she put a couple of Garibaldi biscuits on the saucer. There were rosebuds and forget-me-nots painted on the china and she had removed the silver teaspoon to stop it rattling against the cup. There had been no reply when she knocked on the door. Balancing the tray on her arm, she turned the clasp and opened the door. The room was empty. His wheelchair was there and his pipe and slippers were neatly in place. Propped against the table lamp was a brown manila envelope with the words, “To my little nightingale” written in his shaky but distinctive hand. Placing the tray carefully on the bed, Harriet had opened the envelope and pulled out a small photograph. It was this same picture, a memory of her perched high on her father’s shoulders. She was leaning over to look at him, her wild hair cascading around her beaming face. His head was turned towards his shoulder so that their eyes could meet as they shared a forgotten joke. It was only a small black-and-white snapshot, yet it contained all the colours of the rainbow. Nervously she had turned it over. On the back were the words: “To my little nightingale x”

  George Marchant had taken an overdose the night before. No one told Harriet. No one had explained that he was gone for ever. They had taken him away before she could say goodbye. For a brief second Harriet burned with the rage and betrayal she had felt that day. Then as she looked again at the photograph the anger melted away. It was her past but only a part of it. There were parts it was wise not to remember, but this was not one.

  It was her birthday and the sun was shining. Everyone else had gone out and she was alone with her father. They had been walking round the garden collecting leaves and bugs to study later under their magnifying glass. Tom was working in the vegetable patch with Tess half-sleeping, half-watchful, stretched out on the hot flagstones by the greenhouse. Her father asked him to take a picture of the two of them and while Tom went to find the box Brownie her Daddy hoisted her high above his head. She was flying. All that existed above her was endless blue sky. Sitting high on her father’s shoulders she was far safer than she would ever be again. To her these were the broadest shoulders in the world and the arms that wrapped around her brown gypsy ankles were the strongest, kindest arms of any man. She had bent down to give him an Eskimo kiss and he told her she smelt like a Munchkin. That was the joke they were sharing. As this memory returned to her Harriet laughed again, not with her usual snort, but in a giggly, childish way, as she would have done all those years ago.

  And here they were together, still smiling, sharing the magic, in blissful ignorance of the fact that within a year he would be confined to a wheelchair, unable to raise his arms above his head, or that soon that happy little girl would be robbed of her childhood and thrown into a future where blue skies seldom featured. Nothing could alter the fact that once upon a time this was her life. Nothing could take it away. It would still be hers when what will be had become what was.

  CHAPTER 21

  The revelations by the lake had left Jenny far from exhausted. She was energized, euphoric, her head exploding with questions. Curiosity ate away at her. Who was Harriet? When had she lived at Beckmans and for how long? Already she had been given snatches of a life so different from her own. It was as though she had completed the outer edges of the jigsaw, but the inner picture was still missing. She needed to do some serious research. Maybe she should recruit James. He was a whiz with the computer. How much should she tell him? He would never believe she had befriended a ghost. What about her mother? Should she confide in her? She decided to operate on a need-to-know basis. Tomorrow she would visit the local churchyard to begin her investigations. Pleased with her decision, she discovered that she was extremely hungry. Whistling loudly, she raced back to the house demanding food, to her mother’s delight. It was exactly five o’clock.

  The next time Jenny and Harriet met it was to continue with their singing lessons. Jenny’s throat and lungs had taken quite a bashing, but her voice now rested was back as clear and strong as ever. Scales were the main item on the agenda and Harriet was delighted to find that Jenny shared her own enjoyment in striving for the technical perfection required to master them. For hours they would run up and down musical stairways, changing keys at a given signal or modulating from major to minor at the lifting of a finger or the raising of an eyebrow. The teacher’s eyes never left her pupil, picking up on each tiny glitch or deviation from exact pitch. Only laughter was allowed to interrupt these sessions and then only for the briefest of seconds either when tension needed lifting or a real howler sent them into paroxysms of giggles. Mostly the time was spent in deep concentration and rapt absorption of the task in hand. And they were always enjoyable times. At the end of a lesson they would wind down by singing together. Jenny’s repertoire was considerable for a ten-year-old and the speed and ability with which she mastered new works never failed to impress Harriet. She never said as much to Jenny. Not given to praise, she never told her pupil that she had a truly remarkable gift; she would simply say if the work was good or there was room for improvement. Miss Bunting had taught her well.

  Jenny adored her teacher, but there was much she did not know about her. Asking questions proved pretty futile, so the only option was to play detective. She had already made two visits to the churchyard without telling anyone apart from the sexton, who found her rooting around the headstones. “Acting suspicious” was the way he had described it and for one awful moment she thought he would throw her out or have her arrested. Of course, when she explained what she was looking for he could not do enough to help. He apologized for misjudging her, but told her “one could not be too careful with all the young vandals rampaging around, bent on no good”. He knew of two graves bearing the name Harriet. One dated from 1794 and the other from 1971. The first stone was very worn and offered no clues linking it to her Harriet. In fact the name was so eroded that she would not have recognized it had the good verger not pointed it out. She began to wonder if the project was doomed before it had started.

  The second grave had a simple granite stone without ornamentation, with the words: “Harriet May Marchant. 1931–1971”. 1971. Jenny noted that was the same year her mother had been born. The grave stood in a family plot next to a more elaborate stone bearing the inscription: “David Edward Marchant. 1931–1942. Beloved son. Cruelly taken. R.I.P.” This was it. A boy and a girl born the same year, only the boy died at the tender age of eleven. The likelihood of any other twins named David and Harriet being alive in 1939 when the sampler was embroidered was too incredible. The modest grave was Harriet’s, resting beside that of her brother. Poor Harriet, the horror of losing one’s father and twin was unimaginable. Jenny flinched at the thought. Her blood ran cold as she realised the horror of Harriet’s loss. As she wiped her eyes with her sleeve she wished she too always carried a clean white handkerchief just like her friend.

  The twins’ graves lay side by side in the small family plot, separated by thirty years. The graveyard was tended, but it was large and there was an air of neglect about the older graves. There was no sign of flowers being left; it was many years since a tear had been shed for any of the occupants. Two larger stones dominated this site. The first was inscribed, “George Alfred Marchant 1884–1942. Devoted husband and father”. The second simply read: “Alice Mildred Marchant 1909–47”. Jenny wondered what would be written on her headstone when she died. The idea of being buried was horrible but the alternatives were almost worse. This was not a subject she had thought about until now and it opened up a whole new scary dimension to be explored, but later.

  Thrilled at her discovery of the Marchant family grave, Jenny made a note of the inscriptions in her notepad, thanked the sexton and left. She returned a little later and laid a small bunch of primroses on David’s grave and a posy of violets for Harriet. It felt hypocritical kneeling at the burial place of a friend who was still so alive. Try as she might, she could not imagine Harriet mouldering in the grave. According to this she had died in 1971 at the age o
f forty. The woman she knew was much, much older. It did not seem so awful if you looked at it as a new leaf in an old book. But how unusual was Harriet? Do we all have the choice of going or staying? This was something she needed to discuss later with Mel. It was not the reason for her being here right now. This was the beginning of a quest. Now the research could start in earnest. Harriet was so alive for her that it was incongruous to be researching into her death. She felt as though she was playing a part in a film that she was also directing and watching. There was no way she could explain this to anyone else, she did not even understand it herself. She even doubted that Harriet would.

  She was proved right. Trying to explain this bizarre situation to a ten-year-old brother proved impossible. After several attempts Jenny found herself lying. It was easier to call it a school project: “Choose a headstone in the local church and build up a history of the person’s life.” This involved researching old newspapers and parish magazines. She might have to visit the Coroner’s Office or plough through church records and hunt for birth, death and marriage certificates. James’s face lit up. This was right up his street, exclaiming this was exactly what the internet had been designed for. He was off rattling away at the keys before Jenny could blink.

  It took some time, but eventually the two sleuths amassed a thick dossier on the Marchant family: copies of house deeds, certificates concerning every possible landmark between life and death. They had extracts from local newspapers, photographs from The Lady and Tatler; they had even traced group portraits of the family posed in their Sunday-best. James managed to track down the photographer who had printed the snapshot in the sampler. Miraculously it was a family business that still existed and they had negatives dating back to the beginning of time. They generously allowed the researchers access to a wealth of information, adding a visual dimension to the nearly completed and fascinatingly detailed jigsaw that was the Marchant family.

  Meanwhile Liz was preparing for her exhibition. The timing was perfect. Jenny jumped at the chance to take and fetch things from the printers, often adding a small unnoticed consignment of her own. It also kept their mother out of the way. She had been very dismissive of Harriet’s existence whenever Jenny tried to raise the subject. Everyone had. It was disconcerting to be disbelieved so vehemently by so many whom one expected to believe you. Harriet was explained away as a figment of the imagination; an illusion conjured up to explain the inexplicable; or (and this Jenny found hardest to swallow) a projection of her subconscious mind concocted to enable it to cope with the traumatic complexes of guilt and fear induced by her ordeal!

  Harriet’s reaction to these “professional” opinions was a loud snort. Jenny was dying to tell her how far her research had got; how close she was to proving Harriet’s existence, but she recognized the need for caution. She did not want to blow the whistle too soon. Her work was nearly completed. It took the form of a scrapbook, following the lines of a narrative piece with each entry backed up by, or justified by, actual data she had collected. It was a masterpiece of detection. There was only one identifiable fault and Jenny did not yet know how she was going to overcome it. Even when presented with all this evidence a sceptic could still deny Harriet’s presence. There was no denying a woman named Harriet had lived and that she had lived here in Beckmans. The story of her brother and the tragic circumstances of his death were recounted in newspaper articles and coroner’s reports. But how could Jenny prove her claims to have had prior knowledge, to have been told the whole story first by Harriet? They could simply say she had seen this information somewhere and registered it subliminally. How could she prove Harriet had played a central, integral part in rescuing James? How does one prove that a ghost is physical? Too much was left unanswered.

  Jenny was an exceptionally open child, endowed with considerable psychic gifts herself but not yet tutored in the fine details of mediumship. It had not occurred to her that what she was doing was communicating with the dead. The barriers between life and death had not yet touched her. She had not lost anyone close enough for her to ask the most difficult questions. She believed in right and wrong with the fervour of a caring ten-year-old, but good and evil were not qualities she had really tried to explain. To her innocent mind what was happening was a simple question of fairness. It was not fair that Harriet should go unacknowledged by those people she had helped. Her mother’s forthcoming exhibition was a case in point. Jenny could spot Harriet’s hand in the paintings. She had personal proof of Harriet’s gifts as a teacher and a guide. Why should they take all the glory when Harriet had been denied so much in her own life? Now Jenny had the facts about the Marchant family she felt it her duty to give Harriet the credit due to her.

  The only person Jenny knew who might understand was Mel. Since her cancer, Mel was already taking a less prominent role in young Jenny’s life. The incident in the Fourth Room had caused her to step back even further. It had taken a lot out of her. Over the years she had been taught to ration her psychic work so that it never exposed her to the limits of her ability. This had been her first encounter with a total “possession”. The “sad little girl” had been so desperate to get through that she had taken Jenny’s body as a means to communicate. She had tried it before with Liz with a modicum of success, but with a child of similar age the result was a resounding hit. Mel’s knowledge of possession was that it was safe and containable, so long as the spirit was benign. If the intent was malignant, or if the spirit decided to stay in possession of the body it was using, that was altogether a different matter. It was no longer a simple case of asking the spirit to leave. The person possessed was in danger of losing their claim to their physical body, leaving their own spirit to wander homeless and defenceless, vulnerable as a snail without its shell. A lost soul. Mel had never had to deal with such a dilemma. She had heard of it happening extremely rarely. Nevertheless, such things were not to be ignored or made light of.

  Knowing the occult to be a potentially dangerous place, Mel was in no doubt that this was nowhere for a child to wander at will. It posed no fears for Mel, but then she was a shrewd cookie, an old soul who had been around the unseen world since long before she had been born. Nobody outside her closest circle of practising psychics had ever heard her talk about this side of her work. Just as a priest never admits to tapping into the power of the occult to anyone but his fellow clergy, a good medium keeps her counsel. It had been Mel’s experience that as soon as she started to explain her beliefs beyond the safe shallows of clairvoyance and healing, the shutters slammed down and she would be declared a “nutter”. This did not worry her; her spiritual skin had grown thick and fitted her well, but she was tired of explaining herself to a brick wall of scepticism. Better to go only as far as she could be followed, then leave the disbelievers behind to travel on alone. She had nothing to lose. If at the end of the day she was proved right then she would be laughing. Should it transpire that she had been wrong, then the joke would be on her and she would still be the one laughing. Mel never took her self too seriously.

  So when young Jenny came to her with her story, Mel was intrigued but unsure how to approach it. It occurred to her that it might take her into realms of which she had little or no experience. She had no doubt about the truth of the existence of the Marchants. That was clearly documented. But as she understood it, Jenny was claiming that the spirit of Harriet was alive and well and living at Beckmans. The existence of a spirit was not the problem. She had already encountered the entity that had possessed Jenny and had previously taken over Liz. But that was the spirit of a child. In Mel’s experience a spirit that remained earthbound took the same form it manifested at the time of its physical death. Jenny was claiming knowledge of an older woman, one who was aging in real time and could effect physical change. Never before had Mel been offered such compelling evidence of interaction between the physical and spirit worlds. In her experience, a spirit might work through a living being but had no power to manifest actual physical phenomena, apart
from the odd twitch of a curtain or a clock stopping and starting. To believe Jenny’s story she would have to revise her whole philosophy. The project excited her. And should it prove to be beyond her capabilities she could always call in the help of a more experienced medium. Either way, it was thrilling.

  First, Jenny described how she had met Harriet. She talked about their shared passion for music and how Harriet had been training her voice to prepare her for the Royal College of Music once she left school. Mel could accept all this. Guides from the world of spirit often worked through others, sometimes altruistically helping a kindred spirit and sometimes to satisfy their own thwarted ambitions. Mel was convinced that Liz was receiving guidance with her painting and there was no reason to doubt Jenny was being helped too. It was Jenny’s insistence that Harriet Marchant was her tutor that Mel found difficult to accept. It was her opinion that all the research, the wealth of facts Jenny had accumulated about this family, had filled her head. She was obsessed with Harriet, rather than being possessed by her.

  The outcome was disappointing. No matter how Mel put it, Jenny knew she did not believe in her Harriet. It was not enough to describe her as a spirit. Surely, Jenny argued, we are all spirits but some of us have bodies too. Harriet was a real, tangible person. As far as Jenny was concerned Harriet was no different from herself. But Mel made it clear that she could not accept this. She resolutely clung to her conviction that Harriet was a projection of Jenny rather than someone who existed independently. For someone who had sat with her and spoken with her, had sung with her, been held by her and held her in return, this was not at all satisfactory. Jenny concluded that Mel might as well call Harriet an imaginary friend and have done with it. Jenny’s opinion of Mel plummeted. But then, thinking back, there had been the business with the Tarot. Those last three cards had obviously been chosen by and for Harriet. If she could see that then surely a trained medium would have. The Page of Cups was poor little David, a fish out of water, desperate to communicate. The ferryman who carried them out to meet their fate was describing Harriet’s accident, not hers. Death took one of the children while the other drifted alone throughout life, waiting for a chance to find hope and redemption. The Five of Cups was Harriet, who else? The homecoming, the inheritance: it was all there plainly for everyone to see - if one chose to look. The cards can be read in many ways and they can lead away from the truth if one dares not face it. Jenny decided it was time to tell the whole family the truth about the accident exactly as she remembered it. They could hardly dare to deny Harriet’s existence then.